Death by Deep Dish Pie (20 page)

I closed the medicine cabinet as quietly as possible, then took Geri's one bottle and glass of water out to the bedroom. She took one pill, drank the water, thanked me for all I'd done.

I gave her a little pat on the shoulder—she was already drifting off to sleep—and only felt a little guilty that my real motivation for helping her had been a desire to snoop.

That guilt didn't stop me, a few minutes later, from snooping in Cletus's room.

His room had been easy enough to identify. Besides Alan and Geri's bedroom, there were four other bedrooms on the second floor.

One room had an unmade bed but was otherwise tidy, its walls covered with stock car racing and beauty queen posters, a sweater flung casually across the bed, and a book open on the desk—but the room had the dull stillness of space long unused. Jason's room, I thought sadly. A shrine left exactly as it had been the day Jason died. I could just imagine Alan shrieking at the maid not to make that bed or move that book—a succession of maids carefully dusting around that book for the past ten years.

Trudy's room was a very lived-in young girl's disaster area—the air carried a hint of musk and a sweet tobacco-y scent that I guessed was pot and a bed that was made up in a frilly white comforter and covered with a zoo of stuffed animals. It was all surveyed scornfully by a punk hunk glaring on a poster above Trudy's bed—a young, well-muscled, Asian young man who sported a sleeveless leather vest and chains around his arms and spiky hair. It was enough to terrify the stuffing out of any of the bunnies on Trudy's bed, but they just stared back up at him blandly. I said a quick prayer for her safety.

The smallest room—blandly decorated, furnished with twin beds, the open closet door revealing just a few suits on hangers and several suitcases on the closet floor—I guessed to be the guest room, currently occupied by Dinky and Todd.

That left the final room, at the far opposite end of the hallway from Alan and Geri's master suite. This room, too, was a master suite, though smaller, but still with enough room for a desk and several bookshelves, and a master bathroom. (Occupants of the other four rooms shared a large bathroom positioned exactly in the middle of the hallway.)

This was Cletus's room. It smelled of pipe tobacco and was, despite its clutter of books and papers and magazines everywhere, and its heavy cherry furniture and dark green carpet and draperies and bedspread, the most appealing of the rooms, because of all the activity and life it suggested. In spite of my suspicion that he might have had a role in his brother's death, I had to smile, thinking of Cletus in here, feverishly researching subject after subject, flitting from local history to fireworks chemistry to health foods to religious Utopias.

Okay, so he was the town flake. Was that really so bad? At least while he was enamored with a subject, he stuck to it, digging into it with a zeal that too few people felt about anything in life. And he'd felt it several times over, on several subjects.

And the memory hit me of him standing up for me against Chief Worthy. I really didn't want him to be guilty of his brother's death. Still, to be sure, I had to find out about what Cletus had been researching, find those papers that had been the basis for rewriting the play, maybe even find a copy of the new script itself—because that was what Cletus and Alan had argued about so openly in that terrible meeting at the theatre.

I took a deep breath and started looking, just digging in through stack after stack of papers, on the desk and end table and in the desk drawer. What I was looking for would be old and yellowed—a collection of letters and a diary that should stand out readily enough. I knew I'd know it when I saw it. There were health magazines and herbal magazines and notebooks I took to be personal journals—which I did
not
look in—but they were not what I was looking for.

I was in front of the bookshelf, running a finger over the hardback volumes—a collection on Utopian thought and history that could be its own section at the Mason County Public Library—when the door squeaked open.

Todd Raptor stepped into the room. He grinned when he saw me, his teeth a hard pearly line barely showing between his lips, as he moved toward me.

I reckoned I could always whop him upside the head with one of Cletus's tomes if I had to. I rested a hand on one, at the ready, and tried to look casual. He stopped just a step before me.

”I thought I heard some rummaging around in here. Dropping off the freshly laundered tablecloths, Josie?” Todd asked. “I hardly think it's necessary to bring them directly to the new owner of Breitenstrater Pie Company—although I admire your diligence.”

“No, I'm not here about tablecloths, Todd,” I said. Those I planned to take directly to the company—and maybe use as a way to get into Cletus's office there. But I sure wasn't going to tell Todd that. “I came by to see Geri.”

“I didn't know you were such close friends.”

I ignored that. “While I'm here, I'm checking for some documents Cletus borrowed from the Paradise Historical Society. We need them back.”

“Why the urgency?”

“They're overdue,” I snapped. Geez, this man really was irritating. Even if he was incredibly good-looking . . . I forced myself to focus. “And Cletus is nowhere to be found. Any idea where he might be?”

Todd looked surprised at my question. “Why would I know that? I'm just here visiting my good buddy Dinky, and everyone knows how flaky his dad is. Cletus could be anywhere.”

I decided to take a risk and see what I could surprise out of Todd. After all, the tome I was still fingering would surely be enough to thwart him, if necessary. Although I couldn't really see Todd being the kind to attack me barehanded, head-on. He seemed more the kind that would sneak up on me when I least expected it.

“I would think you'd be very interested in knowing exactly where Cletus is. Since he's now the owner of Breitenstrater Pies, he's the one who will have to approve the final details of the company's sale to your company, Good For You Foods International, which I'm sure you're very eager to see go through. What with your product-development career on the line, and all.”

For just a second, Todd looked like I really had whopped him upside the head. He reeled back and stared at me. Then he grinned again. “So you found out about my position. How?”

I shrugged, resisting the temptation to comment on his haircut. He hadn't even noticed me in Cherry's.

“It's true. I am here representing Good For You Foods International. Despite the unfortunate demise of Alan Breiten-strater—for which my company offers its condolences to the Breitenstrater family, the Breitenstrater Pie Company family of workers, and the entire community of Paradise—I am confident that the merger will go forward in a timely manner benefiting all parties concerned.”

I'd started yawning about halfway through Todd's little speech. Now I rolled my eyes. “Please, Todd. I'm not the press. Or a stockholder. Don't practice your hogwash on me. The fact of the matter is, there's no way you're going to get Breitenstrater Pies now that Alan is gone. Cletus wants the company for Dinky—and always has.”

Todd laughed. “Don't underestimate me. Everyone has a price. I'm sure I'll work something out with Cletus.”

“He'll have to show up, first.”

“He'll show up.”

I didn't share Todd's confidence. If Cletus had done-in his big brother, Cletus could be on the lam and God knows where by now. But if the materials he'd taken from the Paradise Historical Society were anywhere around there, I surely didn't know where he could have hidden them. And I wasn't about to keep looking for them with Todd around.

It was possible, though, that he could help me with one more thing. “I have to get going,” I said. “But I wonder if you—or maybe Dinky—have any idea where Trudy has gotten off to.”

Todd looked at me, frowned. “Trudy?”

Oh, for pity's sake, I thought. The only one who'd paid any attention to poor Trudy was also missing. Maybe Cletus and Trudy had taken off together. I don't know that I'd blame them—but with my suspicions of Cletus's fratricide, that idea worried me even more than the thought of Trudy hitchhiking.

“Trudy,” I said. “You know, the kid of the man from whom you were hoping to buy an entire company. A teen in black who usually wears a ferret chained to her neck. Kind of hard to miss.”

“Oh.” Todd frowned, and actually seemed to be considering. “You know, I haven't seen her since yesterday morning, before the pie-eating contest. She spent a long time in Alan's office—which, in case you're wondering, holds only a very up-to-date computer and contemporary furniture—nothing like this,”—he gave a toss of the hand that seemed to both take in the whole of Cletus's room and dismiss it, all at once—”so I don't think you'll find the quaint old documents you're after. I'm not sure what they were talking about. If she were my kid, though, it would be about private schools that don't allow naturally pretty blondes to dye their hair black. In any case, when she came out, she was pretty upset, and took off. I don't think she had any intention of going to the pie-eating contest.” He paused, thought some more. “And I guess she never came back.”

I was very, very tempted to yank the Utopian tome out of the bookshelf and go ahead and whop Todd upside the head, anyway, just on general principles. How could an entire group of so-called adults be so dismissive of one very obviously needy teenager?

He shrugged. “Maybe she's out with her buddies in the woods.”

I glared at him. “Maybe. I think I'll go find out.” I started to step past him, then stopped, thinking of something. “You were the one who told me about her buddies' setup in the woods. How did you know about it?”

Todd put a finger to his lips. “My secret.”

I rolled my eyes and started past him again, but he grabbed me by the arm. Unfortunately, I was now too far from the bookshelf to grab one of Cletus's tomes. “And Josie,” Todd added, “I'd suggest you not tell anyone about Trudy and her little buddies' setup. We wouldn't want them to get in trouble, would we?”

I had a feeling that Todd was really trying to keep himself out of trouble.

13

To get to the state route that would take me to Licking Creek State Park, where Trudy and her friends had their “utopia,” I had to cut back through Paradise on Main Street, which meant driving right past my laundromat. I couldn't resist stopping in to see what was happening. I learned the following:

a.  I had a message from the vet: Slinky the ferret's condition was the same—she was still in distress, but coping. (I'm still not exactly sure what a ferret's coping techniques would be—requesting a tummy rub?
Ferret Life
magazine and an icy drink with a little umbrella stuck in the top?—but “coping” was the exact word the vet assistant used.)

b.  I had a message from Winnie: she was learning a lot of interesting facts about ginseng, and wished to discuss them with me the next morning, 7
A.M.
sharp, at Sandy's Restaurant.

c.  I did not have any messages from Trudy.

d.  I did not have any messages from Owen.

e.  Sally was very good at taking messages and filling in. The laundromat was not a mess. Three orders had been picked up with two to go. Larry and Barry were napping in the back room. Harry had a flair for art, as evidenced by his beautiful drawings, which he continued to quietly work on at the plastic kiddie picnic table, the little tip of his tongue poking out the left corner of his mouth.

Sally looked pleased when I told her she was doing a great job and didn't mind at all when I asked her to stay for the rest of the afternoon—she still had seven loads of laundry to go, but was thrilled to have already washed, dried, and folded nine other loads.

“You know, Josie, for the first time in months, I'm going to have every bit of our clothes, our sheets, and our towels all nicely washed and dried and folded—and wrinkle-free, too, because I've been folding everything as it comes out of the dryer,” she said dreamily, looking happier than she'd looked in a long time. “And the hairspray did a great job getting the ink out of Harry's shirt.”

Getting caught up on the laundry, I've learned, can do that to a person. There's a sense of order a person gets from having all the laundry washed, dried, folded, and put away. It's kind of like keeping the flotsam and jetsam of life at bay.

I ran up to my apartment and made a fried bologna sandwich, loaded with mayo and a crisp slice of lettuce, which I'd been hankering for ever since visiting Geri.

I rinsed my sandwich down with a Big Fizz Diet Cola, then popped open another can and took it out with me to my car.

Which wouldn't start.

I sat in my driver's seat for a long moment, listening to my Big Fizz fizz. Then I turned the key again. And listened to a grinding sound.

I had a new battery. I had a three-quarters full tank of gas. I had just paid money to have my car overhauled. I sure couldn't afford to have it overhauled again, not when I was paying these large vet bills. My car had to start.

But it wouldn't.

I pressed my eyes shut, thinking. Then I got my Big Fizz cola and went back into my laundromat. I called Elroy to have my car towed back over to his shop for another look-see.

And then I sweet-talked Sally into loaning me her truck.

A half hour later—my little Chevy towed away to Elroy's, the Breitenstrater tablecloths transferred from my car to Sally's truck, my third Big Fizz of the afternoon in the cup holder—I was pulling out of Paradise in Sally's truck.

I have to admit, I kind of liked the higher-up view that I got from the truck. My Chevy hugged the ground. And it was roomier—Sally had an extended cab truck.

Although it felt kind of weird to be driving in a truck with three identical booster seats in the backseat. And Sally's truck was even older than my car—and rattled more, which made it hard to think, and hard to hear WMAS, the Ma-sonville country station with continuous country hits and news on the hour. On the other hand, her radio worked.